Brain Pictures

The inner brain can now be X-rayed accurately. The new process, by which a mixture of gelatine and an iodine compound is injected directly into cavities of the brain, was reported last week at Manhattan's Academy of Medicine by Drs. Harold H. Lefft and John Arthur MacLean Jr. of New York Post-Graduate Hospital.

Until this discovery, doctors had to be satisfied with shadowy pictures of the brain made in complicated fashion: the spinal cord was tapped and all the fluid slowly drained out from the ventricles--five lakes in the center of the brain. Then air was blown up the cord or injected into the ventricles till they were filled with air and X-rays could be taken. Under this treatment patients have terrific headaches until new fluid seeps back into the brain.

Last spring, young Dr. Lefft tried to find a natural body substance that would be harmless to the brain, make clear X-rays possible. After several tries, he hit on Di-odotryosine, a white odorless powder of an iodine compound normally found in the thyroid. Dr. Lefft mixed the powder with ordinary gelatine, tried it first on cats and dogs. Later he and Dr. MacLean used it on 44 patients with excellent results. The new substance, said Dr. Lefft, can also be used for X-rays of lungs, uterus, other abdominal organs.

In 1941 about 63,000 people in the U.S. died of pneumonia, instead of 110,000 as four years earlier. Reason for the decline: widespread use of sulfa drugs. Since 1937 the Federal Government has given money to 21 States and Hawaii to help support programs providing free sulfa drugs and serums for pneumonia victims.

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